Steve Paulson
Oxford, 2010
201.65 P332a
""In this wonderfully insightful and provocative book, Atoms and Eden, radio journalist Steve Paulson explores two of the most powerful forces in human history - science and religion - and the way they shape our world view. Using interviews with scientists, historians and philosophers as a springboard, Paulson deftly creates a conversation about faith, doubt and the very nature of belief systems that draws the reader into rethinking assumptions about what's important in the way we build our lives today."
--Deborah Blum, author, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death
Bible: the Story of the King James Version 1611-2011
Gordon Campbell
Oxford, 2010
220.5203
220.5203 C187b
"Lavishly illustrated with reproductions from early editions of the KJB, Bible: The Story of the King James Version offers a vivid and authoritative history of this renowned translation, ranging from the Bible's inception to the present day. Gordon Campbell, a leading authority on Renaissance literatures, tells the engaging and complex story of how this translation came to be commissioned, who the translators were, and how the translation was accomplished. Campbell does not end with the printing of that first edition, but also traces the textual history from 1611 to the establishment of the modern text by Oxford University Press in 1769, shedding light on the subsequent generations who edited and interacted with the text and bringing to life the controversies surrounding later revisions. In addition, the author examines the reception of the King James Version, showing how its popularity has shifted through time and territory, ranging from adulation to deprecation and attracting the attention of a wide variety of adherents." -publisher
Living with miracles
D. Patrick Miller
Penguin, 2011
299.93 M647L
"Living with Miracles is designed to make even the novice comfortable when approaching ACIM. Miller leads the reader through the most common emotions, reactions, and questions that arise when studying ACIM; provides insights and tips about pacing yourself, as well as when and how to take breaks from study; and gives advice on working through early misconceptions and difficult later stages. He also provides useful, absorbing historical material, stories from practitioners around the world who reflect honestly on their experiences, and a resources section with ideas for those looking to continue their study of this remarkable spiritual teaching." -publisher
Paradise Lust Searching for the Garden of Eden
Brook Wilensky-Lanford
Grove, 2011
233.1 W676p
"In Paradise Lust, Brook Wilensky-Lanford introduces readers to the enduring modern quest to locate the Garden of Eden on Earth. It is an obsession that has consumed Mesopotamian archaeologists, German Baptist ministers, British irrigation engineers, and the first president of Boston University, among many others. These quixotic Eden seekers all started with the same brief Bible verses, but each ended up at a different spot on the globe: Florida, the North Pole, Ohio, China, and, of course, Iraq. Evocative of Tony Horwitz and Sarah Vowell, Wilensky-Lanford writes of these unusual characters and their search with sympathy and wit. Charming, enlightening, and utterly unique, Paradise Lust is a century-spanning history that will take you to places you never imagined." -publisher
Philosophy
Lyotard Reader
Jean Francois Lyotard; Andrew Benjamin (ed.)
Blackwell, 1992
194 L991L
"The Lyotard Reader is a collection of Jean-Francois Lyotard's most important and significant papers to date. While they are all written from within philosophy, they seek to address subjects as wide-ranging as film, painting (Adami, Francken, Newman), psychoanalysis, Judaism and politics. The originality of Lyotard's work means that it can not be readily situated within any one philosophical tradition. Instead he returns philosophy itself to debates across a range of areas and, in so doing, redefines the philosophical enterprise." -publisher
World Lit
The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a way of life
Harold Bloom
Yale, 2011
801.3 B655a
"Featuring extended analyses of Bloom's most cherished poets—Shakespeare, Whitman, and Crane—as well as inspired appreciations of Emerson, Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Ashbery, and others, The Anatomy of Influence adapts Bloom's classic work The Anxiety of Influence to show us what great literature is, how it comes to be, and why it matters. Each chapter maps startling new literary connections that suddenly seem inevitable once Bloom has shown us how to listen and to read. A fierce and intimate appreciation of the art of literature on a scale that the author will not again attempt, The Anatomy of Influence follows the sublime works it studies, inspiring the reader with a sense of something ever more about to be. " -publisher
Poems Under Saturn
Paul Verlaine (trans. by Karl Kirchwey)
Princeton, 2011
841 V521p
""Karl Kirchwey's translations of early Verlaine are true to the emotional coloring and musicality of the originals, their Baudelairean ambiguities of feeling, their exciting mixture of dictions. 'Classic Walpurgisnacht' is one of many renderings which seem to me masterly."--Richard Wilbur
There are Things I Want You to Know about Stieg Larsson and Me
Eva Gabrielsson
Seven Stories, 2011
839.73 L334g
"Here is the real inside story—not the one about the Stieg Larsson phenomenon, but rather the love story of a man and a woman whose lives came to be guided by politics and love, coffee and activism, writing and friendship. Only one person in the world knows that story well enough to tell it with authority." -publisher
"Fans of [Stieg Larsson's] books looking for an intimate peek into the life of a man who summoned a dark scary version of Sweden will not be disappointed. The book is a short, highly emotional tour through a widow's grief and dispossession, and the details of the couple's life together are jarringly juxtaposed with blood feuds and score-settling. People wtih an adjacency to fame often try to glom onto a piece of it, but Gabrielsson is up to something more ambitious and personal". —New York Times Book Review